Secured to the function-supporting units in this kind of machine tool are in particular work pieces such as for example gear blanks or rough-cut gears, and tools such as for example mill cutters or grinding worms. By moving the function-supporting units according to their axes of movement, the engagement between the tool and the work piece is established as required by the work process being performed. The displacement-actuator units which drive the function-supporting units according to their respective axes of movement are normally equipped with a dedicated controlled drive motor for each axis of movement. With the respective displacements of the function-supporting units resulting from the control of the drive motors, the relative movement between the tool and the work piece as required for the work process being performed is set with the requisite high degree of accuracy. Another function-supporting unit can serve for example as carrier for a spray nozzle to deliver a cooling agent to the process zone. Due to the mobility of this function-supporting unit, the distance to the tool or to the work piece can be set as desired. However, providing each axis of movement with its own dedicated controlled drive motor makes the machine tool expensive to manufacture.
In view of this problem, the invention has the objective to provide a machine tool of the kind outlined at the beginning, which will have the same functionality but will be less expensive to build.